ACCARDO SPECIAL MEANS HALLADAY'S CY HOPES WILL DIE YOUNG

The blame for tonight's Blue Jays mini-debacle -- a come-from-ahead 7-2 special against Cleveland -- is being laid of the feet of Jeremy Accardo, or more accurately, on his right arm.

Accardo's soiling of the good linen cost the Jays and Roy Halladay a win, and to take it one step farther, knocked Doc completely out of the running for the American League Cy Young Award race. On the plus side, it was timely, since with Uncle Ted Rogers musing that he might commit more cash toward the 2007 payroll, it underlined the Jays' likely need for 7th/8th inning relief help.

While Doc stayed stuck at 16 wins despite chucking his usual seven innings of one-run ball, Twins wunderkind Johan Santaña blanked the Devil Rays, becoming the first pitcher to 17 wins, a nice stat to go along with his 2.84 ERA and 231 strikeouts, also American League bests. (Good thing Pat convinced me of the rightness of Santaña's Cy Young credentials, since he's now on pace to win a pitching Triple Crown.

(Trivia question: who was the last left-hander to lead the AL in wins, strikeouts and ERA in the same season? Answer at the end.)

So it's all Accardo's fault? If only it were so simple, but that word only applies to Jays manager John Gibbons, who once again raised doubts that he has any kind of special feel (quote, unquote) for making the right decisions with pitchers.

The only defence for tonight's managerial moves is that Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi wants to see Accardo and Brandon League pitching in such situations, to better get an idea of how they might handle it next year before they decide whether or not to commit major money to a veteran. (That was originally going to be, "since they don't have the money to commit to a veteran," but that could change. There's a follow-up post coming.)

So perhaps the call came from "on high" to first bring in Accardo, and then compound it by leaving him in after he let four of five mostly no-name Cleveland batters reach base, tying the game and leaving the bases loaded with two out for a .200 hitter, Andy Marte. Sub-.200 hitter or not (with one homer in 92 at-bats on the season to boot), Marte promptly jumped on the volleyball Accardo served up and spiked it for a kill, knocking his first pitch over the centre-field wall for a game-deciding grand slam.

Getting back to Gibbons, if he was just blindly doing the GM's bidding, then what does that say about him as manager? What does it say about the Jays brain trust?

Yes, Accardo had sweet F-A tonight, but Gibbons, with help from some sketchy outfield play by Alex Rios, did just as much to let this win get away.

The manager, regardless if whether he acted alone, irked the baseball gods by committed the ever-popular can't-leave-well-enough-alone move of changing pitchers in the middle of the inning with nobody on base and no runs in.

This is one of yours truly's biggest pet peeves, and no less a baseball mind than Bill James has argued that there should be a rule limiting it. (After tonight, many Jays fans would be inclined to agree.) As James put it, when managers keep shuffling in their lefty specialists late in the game, they are "chasing a percentage they can never catch." Plus it slows the game down something terrible, and after all, this is supposed to be entertainment.

In the eighth, after Halladay came out, Jays lefty Scott Downs retired the first batter up for Cleveland, righty-hitting Victor Martínez (who hits about 50 points less against southpaws). Downs got the quick hook because Gibbons was thinking in moron-lockstep: I'm supposed to bring a righty in to pitch to Richie Garko, since he's a righty.

(Never mind that Garko has actually hit righties better during his brief time in the majors, or that righty batters are hitting.300 off Accardo, compared to .198 for lefties.)

There was no one on base. Why not let Downs keep going?

Instead, Accardo came on, and the Indians got a rally started when Garko went the other way with a pitch and hit into the right-field corner for a double as for the umpteenth time this season, a ball fell in a few feet away from Alex Rios. (Also, strangely enough, the last time I was this irked about the Jays blowing a late-inning lead, it started with a double into the right-field corner.)

It would have been a tough catch, so neither Jamie Campbell nor Rance Mulliniks remarked on Rios not making it. However, the ball hit low on the wall, so it was catchable.

Seriously, long before his gaffe last week in Boston, it's become more and more obvious that at first blush, Rios is a bad outfielder. No one seems to notice this thanks to him enjoying the Vlady Guerrero Halo Effect -- he's a tall, powerful, fast player, and he has a strong throwing arm, so no one thinks he could possibly be a bad outfielder. Bad outfielders are supposed to look more like John Kruk.

Regardless, time and again this year, yours truly has seen balls hit that, to someone who's seen a million and one Jays games, I immediately think Rios can get to if he's positioned right and reads the ball well. Almost inevitably, the ball hits the ground or the wall a few feet away from him. Either he just doesn't anticipate well, or it's a failure by the coaches he's had in the Jays organization.

Not to be too rough on Alex, of course, seeing as did drive in the Jays' first run with a one-out triple in the sixth. Of course, he never got any farther.

It all added up to another frustrating night in a frustrating season. Not to put myself in the narrative, but when will I learn and just go to the movies when I have a Tuesday night off? The Jays are out of playoff contention and are blowing games left and right for its star pitcher. In the words of Quagmire on Family Guy, "I got a question for you: Why are you still here?"

Well, they did say they were going to up the payroll . . .

(Trivia answer: Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser was the last AL lefty to win a pitching Triple Crown, going 25-9 with a 1.81 ERA and 212 strikeouts for the 1945 Detroit Tigers. There was no Cy Young Award in those days but he did win a second straight AL MVP award, which no pitcher has done before or since. Eat it, Schwab.)

Related:
Alex Rios Makes Blooper Reel; Where's Lonnie Smith When You Need Him? (Sept. 1)
AL Cy Young: Halladay vs. Santana (originally posted Aug. 27)
Our Feminized Society Catches Up To John Gibbons (Aug. 22)
Just Gibbon The O's A Win (Aug. 8)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.